Passing Moments, Slipping Dreams
by Sneaks Isobelle Charlotte
Summary: Gretchen wakes up at midnight to a very weird dream. (based around the fact that Gretchen isn't in the slide of people waking up with the crash.) Please review!


"Passing Moments, Slipping Dreams," by Isobelle Charlotte  
  
Authors Note: I don't own Donnie Darko, though I wish I did. This small story stems from the fact that in the end of the movie, we never really see Gretchen at night, like we see most of the other characters until the morning of the accident on her bike. This is from her point of view. Please send me reviews!!  
  
Gretchen Ross awoke with a fright, the vision of a boy outlined by headlights of an oncoming car ran through her mind. She thought she had screamed. She gasped for breath, holding her stomach and coughing as if the car belonging the headlights had knocked her very breathe from her lungs. She sat there for a moment, choking on fresh air as she shook from her nightmare. To her, it has seemed so real, as if she had actually lived through it.  
  
Her alarm clock light up a tiny portion of her room, as she looked over to check the time. Midnight. She moved her hand now to the back of her neck and turned to look out into the blackness of the night. The tree outside her room rocked slightly as a gust of wind blew around. She blinked, trying to remember the boy's face from her dream. She thought hard for a moment, but it seemed that with each passing moment, she could feel it slipping away. She shook her head trying to remember, still holding on to the feeling that she had about it. It had seemed so real, like it had been a long past memory.  
  
She could hear sirens sounding in the distance as she suddenly felt a stab of pain in her throat, as if she was about to cry. She laid her head back down on her pillow, wondering who the boy had been, and why she could barely remember her dream. She closed her eyes, allowing sleep to take over her once again in hopes that the boy would come back to her dreams.  
  
* * *  
  
When Gretchen woke up the next morning, sunlight was spilling through her window, the noise of heavy machinery and voices flooding through the cracks of her windowpanes as she glanced out the window to see the street lined with news vans, ambulances, fire trucks and several black vans and cars. Curious as to what was going on in her new neighborhood, she dressed and headed down the stairs to her garage. She dug around the many boxes and crates pilled up from their move, and pulled out her bike and climbed on, and began to peddle down the driveway. She saw several neighbors running over to a house on a few ways down the street, a crowd gathered around. She peddled a little faster, wondering what could have happened. As she grew closer, she saw what looked like a large jet engine being pulled out of the house with a crane. She slowed to a stop, using her feet as brakes as she stopped in front of a little boy.  
  
"Hey, what's going on?" she asked, staring at the engine as it swung over the ground heading towards a flat bedded truck.  
  
"A horrible accident," the boy breathed in. "A neighbor got killed."  
  
"What happened?" she asked blinking looking at the front doors as a gurney with a dead body was being pulled out of the house.  
  
"Got smooched by a jet engine," the boy shook his head watching the engine being lowered on to the truck.  
  
"What was his name?" Gretchen questioned, staring at the gurney, which was now being loaded into the back of an ambulance.  
  
" Donnie. Donnie Darko. I feel bad for his family," the boy said with a frown, just staring off into the horrible scene that lay out before them. To Gretchen, it was like something out of a sci-fi movie.  
  
" Yeah," she said, choking on the name. Donnie Darko. For some reason, she felt like a piece of her had died, yet, on the other hand, she felt more alive than she ever had in her life.  
  
She saw the mother of the dead boy leaning against the tree outside the house, smoking a cigarette, just watching as the corner loaded her son's body into the back of the ambulance.  
  
" Did you know him?" the boy asked now looking in the same direction as her. Gretchen thought for a moment, the name ringing in her ears as if she had screamed it herself a long time ago. The bright headlights in her eyes. "Donnie!"  
  
" No," she shook her head as they stood there for a moment watching, wishing that she had known him. She gazed at the mother, taking a long drag on the cigarette in hand; her elbow perched on her hip. She looked at over and noticed Gretchen. Feeling compelled to do something, Gretchen raised her hand, waving as if to say: "It's all right. We'll all live through this." The mom waved back, slightly confused at first, but still willing to wave. Gretchen noticed the boy waving too, maybe perhaps they thought it would help give her peace.  
  
Gretchen wasn't sure how much longer she stood there waving, or even how much longer after she had. She watched as the ambulance transporting the boy's body drove out of sight, and even watched as they drove off with the jet engine. All around her she could hear people talking about how they couldn't find the plane that it had belonged to. Gretchen closed her eyes; a sudden flash of an old woman standing in the middle of a road, clutching a letter, flooded her vision. She looked up at the sky, smiling slightly.  
  
"Thank you for my life," she blessed herself as she got back on her bike and peddled off in the direction of Carpathian Ridge. 


End file.
